Second-Wave Feminism & Canadian Universities

As the result of the exterior efforts by second-wave feminists across North America, university campuses began to change to reflect the changing attitudes of the general public. In Canada, many of these changes took place in Quebec and Ontario, due to their high number of enrolled female students; the changes implemented by the feminists on campuses like McGill, Concordia, and York, to name a few, led to reforms which changed the landscape of university campuses all across Canada as the result of competitive pressure.

The reason that feminist movements were able to take root on university campuses in particular was due to the casual organizational setting that was available on campus. The spaces, already engineered for open-mindedness and higher learning, provided spaces where feminists could connect with students using friendly “everyday encounters”, to promote their goals and interact with the student body.

In particular, Marlene Dixon, a renowned sociologist from Chicago, came to teach at McGill in 1969, and her presence on campus encouraged women to begin to meet and discuss ways in which they could being their perspectives and needs to campus. McGill became the first Canadian university to instill a large-scale group of this kind: the McGill Steering Committee for Women’s Studies. The efforts of these groups not only paved the way for the installation of future Women’s Studies courses and degree programs, but also had a profound effect on campus life as well by encouraging open discussion and debate and connecting with other student groups to promote positive change.

For example, outspoken feminist voices, and the climate of acceptance and fairness that they evoked, encouraged the creation of what would come to be known as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) groups on campus, as well as the development of racially diverse groups offering support to minority students and students with disabilities.

In addition to promoting opportunities for outspokenness by student voices, the feminist movement also pushed for reforms with regards to the treatment of female professors and instructors on campuses. They pushed for equal benefits, affordable and often on-campus day care services for mothers with young children, paid maternity leave, and equal pay. It is worth noting that no institution in Canada made these changes without pressure from student groups and female faculty members. Up until this point, most Canadian universities also implemented policies which excluded female staff members from certain parts of the Faculty Club. This policy was changed in the mid 1960’s after a sit-in demonstration by female staff members at McGill.

Other ways in which the feminist movement impacted campus culture were changing language regulations on campus. Feminists fought against sexist and misogynistic language in classrooms, in formal documentation, and in student-run campus newspapers. One such example is the Plumber’s Pot, an engineering undergraduate newspaper at McGill which frequently baited lesbian feminists by publishing derogatory statements about women and gays in its editorial column. Outrage by female students led to actions by the university to officially ban the newspaper in 1988.

Not only did actions undertaken by feminists change the ways in which campuses spoke and wrote about the concerns and needs of women, they also shed light on problems such as campus safety, implementing “safe walk” escort services, in which security guards were tasked with walking women to their vehicles or bus stops in the dark. These measures became widespread across Canada after a lone gunman massacred 14 feminist students at École Polytechnique at McGill in 1989. Though changes in campus safety came to extend beyond physical safety to mental well-being, as contemporary feminists have helped in the creation of “safe spaces” on campus for LGBT students. A local example of feminists at work on campuses is the installation of the “genderless bathroom” at the University of Winnipeg.

Though many students do not realize it, many of the services and changes made to university campuses have been the result of pressure from feminist groups. By organizing rallies, sit-ins, sponsoring organizing educational forums, and engaging with the student body, feminists have been able to implement changes on a grand scale across the country that are not only benefit female students, but strive to create a climate of tolerance and acceptance in universities throughout North America.